Arizona Friends of Chamber Music closed out its 31st Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival on Sunday with the world premiere of its latest commissioned piece, Steven Banks' saxophone quintet "Come What May."
It was only the second work the Tucson chamber presenter had commissioned for saxophone, and it came 17 years after composer Ellen Zwilich wrote her Quintet for Alto Sax and Strings. Pacifica Quartet and the saxophonist Ashu premiered the work in early 2008.
Banks, a composer and saxophonist who was among the dozen musicians on the 2025 festival lineup, performed the premiere with the Miró Quartet, which had not been on a Tucson stage since the Friends 2014 festival.
"Come What May" has flashes of somber melancholy interspersed with achingly beautiful melodies introduced by the saxophone and fleshed out by the strings. The Miró conveyed the palpable sense of urgency in the short bursts of frenzied fits that contrasted Banks' high to low blasts on the sax.
Sitkovetsky Trio violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, center, and pianist Wu Qian chatted with Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival founding coordinator Peter Rejto, left, after the trio's performance on Sunday.
Banks wrote gorgeous music for the strings, which the Miró accentuated with pristine playing. But it was the sax that shined throughout, with challenging note and mood changes and long stretches that had some of us in the audience wondering when he was going to take a breath.
The audience filling Leo Rich Theater Sunday afternoon gave Banks the afternoon's biggest ovation that included whistling and shouts of "Bravo! Bravo!"
Arizona Friends has one of the country's most prolific commissioning programs and one of the only ones that relies on its audience to pick up the tab. "Come What May" joins a catalogue of more than 80 commissions since the program launched in 1997.
The audience also applauded the Sitkovetsky Trio's terrific performance of Beethoven's Piano Trio in E-flat Major, which opened the concert. The trio — violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, pianist Wu Qian and cellist Isang Enders — performed with equal measures of sublime elegance and sheer joy. The sometimes playful interaction between Sitkovetsky and Enders as they took their cues from Qian added a convivial intimacy to the performance.
Also on Sunday, longtime festival pianist Bernadette Harvey, who was named festival co-director with her husband Peter Rejto, played two pieces on Sunday's second half.
She joined Sitkovetsky cellist Enders for a lush reading of Schumann's Adagio and Allegro for Cello and Piano and was part of an ensemble on the concert's closing work, Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor. That performance also included cellist Daniel McDonough, violinist Martin Beaver and violist Masumi Per Rostad.
Grammy-winning violist Masumi Per Rostad donned a different pair of colorful socks for his Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival performances, including these that he wore on Sunday.
Rostad, making his first solo appearance in Tucson since he was here with the Pacifica Quartet in 2012, showed off a little fashionista flare throughout the eight-day festival. Each day, he donned a different pair of colorful socks.
Sunday's installment: black socks festooned with pink, yellow, turquoise and orange squares, circles and triangles.
